In the last two decades the composition of the labor force in the United States has changed significantly. Today, most employeesare mothers or fathers of children under eighteen in families where both parents are employed or where the employed parent is a single mother. This represents a reversal of the older family ideal in which a father worked to provide income and a mother performed the domestic work that sustained families. The practices of business and much of the attention of (...) business ethicists have assumed the older ideal. However, the wage work of mothers raises serious concerns about how business should view their parent-employees. Business has responded with family friendly corporate policies. This article analyzes these policies in light of two particular values: The social equality of women and the well-being of families. Finding current policies inadequate to meet these values, this paper calls for renewed ethical attention to the issues of time demands on employees and just wages. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY PRESENTS A PARTICULAR HISTORY OF DETROIT, ONE THAT, BY analyzing the sites and uses of unshared social power, provides an ethical analysis of the processes by which Detroit has become the poorest big city in the United States. Of necessity this story must weave together a variety of elements: economic forces and the theories that justify them, public policies and the politics that underlie them, white racism, sexism, and the spirit of resistance that found its voice in the (...) streets, in radical philosophic and economic theories, in union activism, and in some Christian churches. In this history can be heard the voices of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the liberal cry for civil rights, and the radical demand for workers' rights. Today, as these same destructive economic and political choices reach into the homes of Detroit's and other cities' white suburbanites, these Detroit voices prophetically challenge business as usual. (shrink)

CONCERN ABOUT THE WELL-BEING OF FAMILIES HAS BEEN A CONSTANT refrain in the history of the United States. Change in family forms often has been regarded as a breakdown of the family and a harbinger of social decay. In each historical period, a family form has been identified as an ideal in contrast to which other forms of family have been found deficient, even dysfunctional. Social policies have been designed to reward "good" families and discourage "bad" ones. Today, the increase (...) in single-mother families, the high divorce rate, and the percentage of children living in poverty often are cited as evidence of the breakdown of the family and abandonment of family values because of a culture of "inordinate individualism." The Marriage Movement particularly represents this view. In this essay I first describe this approach to family values, its use of social science to support its claims, and the influence of this perspective on certain liberal Christian proposals for family ideals. I argue that family ideals assume race, gender, and economic privileges that are not available to all. By ignoring socioeconomic realities for many people, these ideals may mask and reinforce unjust inequalities. In fact, the themes and policies of the defense-of-marriage movement fit nicely with the neoliberal political economy that developed in the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that church and social policies that value families must connect the well-being of all families with a commitment to gender equality and economic justice. (shrink)

A selective excavation of labor history and an analysis of recent worker experiences in Detroit's bankruptcy expose the conflict of rights that shapes the US capitalist society. Masked by myths, forbidden memories, and selective values, the trumpeting of "workers' rights" in the United States today weakens workers' claims to rights, denying many "an existence worthy of human dignity". Thirty years ago, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Economic Justice for All called for a "New American Experiment" establishing positive economic human (...) rights. Today, the problems they identified have worsened, and the conversion they called for is absent from dominant political and economic discourse. The survival strategies of marginalized communities suggest a praxis of conversion creating possibilities for a future of human dignity. (shrink)